Title text:
Now that I’ve finally gotten an electric vehicle, I’m never going back to an acoustic one.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3214/
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In all seriousness, the transition of small devices away from AA/AAA batteries is very annoying. I always had batteries charged, now I have to constantly plug some junk in and wait?
For the blackout concerns: if you have solar panels, irrelevant, actually you’d be in a better place than with an ICE car. Also, if you have a garage, a fairly powerful generator cost peanuts compared to the price of a car, and some can run on gas cilinders and gasoline. Way safer to store gas cilinders than gas.
Batery longevity: I read an article that reviewed longevity, now that there is enough data, and most cars had better longevity, by far, than expected, except for some early models, like 1st Gen leafs. These had lower longevity, attributed to lower capacity batteries that had to be recharged a lot more. Higher capacities, coupled with way better charging circuits and logic, make for way more durable batteries.
Public charging costs is a valid concern.
Long drives. Decades ago I drove with my ex and my in laws from Madrid to Brussels in one go. 2 of us taking turns.I swore to never do more than 800 Km in one go. We did it in a largish car, pretty comfortable. Yeah, no.
Recyclability: most of ICE cars are recyclable, even much of the plastics, which are used to make floor mats, soundproofing, etc. Most of the car is metal, copper and aluminum being especially valuable.
Joy of driving. Once you experience the insane torque and acceleration of EVs, even the smaller ones, you won’t want a stick, unless you have a true sportscar.
I drive a 26 year old car, which I will keep until it has a catastrophic failure, love the thing. Not a major failure ever. Next will be an EV.
…yeah, five hundred miles is a pretty good run, especially with slow speed limits…
…stateside i’m usually spent after twelve hours solo, which will carry you about a thousand miles, although my wife will power through 1250 miles driving in shifts (but that makes for an exhausting day)…
Recyclability: most of ICE cars are recyclable,
There’s no reason to expect this will be any different with EVs. There are already companies claiming better recycling rates, but they can’t scale up yet because there are not enough retired EVs
People conveniently forget that gas pumps are powered by electricity also. A person with solar panels and an ev is going to be in a much better situation in a large scale power outage than someone with a gas car.
My next car is going to have physical fucking knobs and buttons.
I’m not buying another car with a tablet to control the media and the climate, regardless of power source. If I have to buy a 10 year old rust bucket I will. I’m not going back to the tablet until there’s literally no other option available.
I got an EV last year and I woulld never go back. It’s just so much better.
As an EV owner, I have recieved an interesting amount of reasons why people won’t buy them:
- The autonomy is not real (so far it’s been in my case and in any case, in italy, for how people drive, the declared consumptions are all fake because people here only drives by pressing the accelerator to the bottom)
- What if there’s a blackout in the whole city and you can’t charge your car? (The whole city, for a long time? I’d be worried about other stuff, but go on…)
- What if all the public plugs are occupied when you want to charge and you find yourself without battery to go to "ork tomorrow? (ALL OF THEM? At the same time? And why are you waiting to charge your car until it reaches 1% charge?)
- What if you come back from a long trip and have a 10% battery remaining and then you recieve an emergency call and have to leave immediately and you can’t because the 50-60km you have in your battery are not enough to reach your destination? (I can get to a quick charge station and get 200km in 15mins or so? The world is not ending? And if it’s THAT urgent then I should be calling an ambulance anyway, because I probably need one)
- I don’t want an automatic car! I love changing my gear! (Thank fuck I got rid of the clutch and the gears… never been happier when I drive!)
- Ah… but the speed, the torque of a thermic sports car… (Dude, you can’t afford a sports car, what the thell are you talking about? And even if I can’t either and I have a pretty average EV, you should just press the accelerator of an EV to the bottom and see for yourself)
- But it’s all about the feeling… the sound… (oh, I get it now… you want to “feel powerful” making everyone look at you and your noise making machine… yeah, I can’t compete there, and I don’t even want to anyway)
- But the electricity is made by burning fuel! (Most of it comes from green sources and, anyway, what the hell do you think your car run on? Water? Are you not very intelligent?)
- But the lithium comes from child labor!! (Says while casually using their iPhone, wearing clothes made in a third world country…)
After this, they usually proceed to make absurd claims like "I don’t care, I just don’t trust EVs.
- I don’t want an automatic car! I love changing my gear!
This is me. I have a hybrid car and I miss the stick every time I drive it.
The problem is those days are gone, even without EVs. Between modern automatics more efficient and longer lasting, and cheap reliable CVTs (also more efficient), manual transmissions have no future. I also prefer driving a stick, and frequently complained about limited availability in the US, but technology has passed it by
cheap, reliable CVT
I may be out of date but Nissan’s CVTs self destruct very effectively and Subaru’s don’t handle the torque of the H6 so well. They’re still unpleasant to drive. Give me an EV every day.
I’ve been there, I did manual -> hybrid -> electric.
I did miss the stick when I was driving an hybrid. In the hybrid it felt like was I had to give away some of the control I had on the car by not being able to change gear.
With the EV on the other hand it’s totally different, the car is way more responsive, there is power the moment I press the pedal and the concept of gear disappear.
I don’t miss driving with a stick when driving an EV
It’s like in a videogame. Power from the start.
My reason for not buying an EV: it’s still a fucking car. Bit less shit, but still shit.
That should be Number 1 Reason to not buy an EV!
Well yeah if you can avoid it you shouldn’t buy a car, but if you have to buy a car you should buy electric
Agreed! EVs are certainly superior to ICE cars, but they’re a band aid instead of a solution.
Bring back public transit!
Fuck cars alright, but as long as I’m dependant on a car, my no.1 reason to get an EV is that I hate the oil industry even more. Fuck their oil and money and pollution and fuck their wars and politics.
I mean, technically, an eBike is an Electric Vehicle, and not a fucking car. Otherwise, hard agree.
Here’s a financial argument. The initial purchase price is too high for me, and the depreciation of electric vehicles is also very high. Overall cost of ownership per distance driven is lower if I drive a small gasoline-powered car.
I really don’t want it to be that way, but that’s the reality I have to deal with. Cheaper EVs are coming, but they still aren’t in my price range.
Must be a Europe thing. I ran the numbers in America and avoiding gas cost (vs electric cost per mile) means the car paid for itself after 30k miles. And that’s ignoring that it needs no maintenance.
I thought European gas was expensive. Is the electricity over there also really pricey?
Depreciation is a massive slice of the pie in all cars, but EVs are hit even harder. Buying a used EV is probably my best bet in about 5-10 years from now.
Specific cost of ownership (as in €/m) is what actually matters in the end, but most people ignore it. Usually people just compare gasoline and electricity prices and draw their conclusions based on that. That sort of analysis is not going to give you a very reliable picture.
Regardless, if I had the money to drive a BMW, buying an EV would be a simple decision. Who cares about the purchase price, ongoing expenses or depreciation when you have that much money. Since I’m not in that market segment, EVs aren’t really a viable option for me just yet.
It depends where you live. We have cheap gas and I live in an area with one of the more expensive prices for electricity (and there are worse), but “filling up” at home is much cheaper than “filling up” my ice car.
However
- yes, we only have expensive EVs here. You can make up an extra $5k of purchase price with money saved on operations, but $10k or more is much harder
- trip chargers are already in a race for exploitation, profit seeking. Except for Tesla, prices are high, maintenance is low, and they compete for trapping customers more than attracting them
- since EVs became political we are currently off balance between supply and demand, so used cars are over supplied and lost much value. The quickly changing technology just makes it worse
Very much similar to my own experience. The blackout is the funniest, because gas stations don’t work in a blackout, while solar panels do (assuming you disconnect them from the grid).
I would add one:
- But I couldn’t drive 1.000km without stopping (how often do you do that? It doesn’t seem safe anyway…)
deleted by creator
Oh, yeah! I forgot that one!
When you ask them how many times they found themselves with a thermic car doing 1000km without stopping they usually tell you: never, but what if I had to?
Bitch, if you need to do 1000km without stopping, you should be taking a train or a plane. Driving 10-12 hours without a single stop is bad and dangerous.
This was something I realized when we drive to my wife’s parents. It’s 2,000 km each way from our house in the US to where they are in rural Quebec, Canada and we usually drive it twice a year. The charging times sound long, but even with our petrol car most of our stops end up being between 15 to 30 minutes anyways between fueling the car, taking the dog to grass, taking turns going to the toilet so the dog isn’t alone in the car, getting food and giving me a chance to eat so I’m not trying to drive and eat at the same time.
I think the real challenge of electric range anxiety is that it still takes planning, at least in some parts of the US. There are areas on our route where it might be 100 kilometers to the next fast charger, and there’s no guarantee that all of them will be working or compatible with a car’s fastest charging speeds. We don’t really have to think about where we’ll get gasoline; there’s pretty much always a station, often several, within the next few miles. Usually if we’re waiting to stop for fuel it’s because we’re looking for the best price, looking for a place that might have decent toilets, and/or might have an appealing food option along with the gasoline. That’s all manageable in electric but might need some advanced planning, and many American drivers aren’t used to doing that kind of route planning in advance anymore.
How many cars in Europe can drive 1,000 km without stopping anyways? The only ones I can think of offhand are large American pickup trucks intended for towing large trailers long distances. I wouldn’t expect to see them in Europe.
Any diesel can drive more than 1000 km with a full deposit. But laws forbid in some countries to drive more than 2 hours or 300 km without stopping.
The only somewhat valid use case for “driving 1.000km without a stop” would be several people in the car taking turns on the driver’s seat. While you’d technically need to stop to switch drivers this in itself is way quicker than even a quick charge on paper.
BUT: considering traffic jams, speed limits and such - a 1.000km trip would take around 10+ hours anyway. You’re not going to tell me that you do not even stop to pee or stretch a bit for 10+ hours, do you?
While growing up my family once a year would take a 20 hour car trip to visit extended family for a couple weeks then 20 hours back. Parents would do five hour shifts and get the whole thing done in one go. Shift changes meant refuel, bathroom, that’s it. Other than that there was no stopping unless it was a “the next bump in the road I will 100% shit myself” kind of an emergency
Now personally I’d argue maybe we shouldn’t have been taking road trips in that manner because it’s like putting your body through a meat grinder. But if trips like that are someone’s goal I doubt there are many charging stations in the middle of absolutely nowhere that can fully charge an EV in the time it takes to pee. I’m hoping though maybe a shift to EVs will change the way people approach long road trips to actually force them to take breaks
It takes just one small change …. My family did similar, but those stops were planned for mealtimes. We either did fast food or brought a camping stove, but always ate outside the car. Kids were encouraged to “run down to the end of that path with the dog”. Anyhow, the presence of even a fast food meal meant that there would have been plenty of time to charge.
gas stations don’t work in a blackout,
…do US statioms not have their own generators?
How are you going to fill those generators if the pump has no power?
Checkmate atheists
2: I wonder what those people think a gas pump runs on?
If there is no electricity, then those won’t pump either.
I wonder how many of those would not apply to hybrid cars.
Also, for 8: Making car go by burning fuel in a big optimised plant is likely more efficient than doing it in an engine that has to fit inside the car.
Another point to add for 9, all the EV parts can be recycled. The metal body is recycled in to new cars and battery components are also recycled in to new batteries.
Relevant technology connections video
With point 2 you can now use a real life case. Last year the Iberian peninsula had a blackout that lasted more than a day. The combustion engine cars could not pump petrol because guess what: pumps need electricity.
For a lot of people it’s number 7 and I mean, that’s sad
1 is real though, and it can be a pain
There’s also the case where some areas are isolated and there’s no charger nearby and that can be a pain, and yea, that’s not a good spot to be in
Finally, if you can’t charge at home, you’re not really going to save on electricity price compared to fuel, so that’s not the best purchase, and it might be a pain to charge frequently outside if you have an cheap car that charges slowly
In the worst case scenario (very high KWh price), charging is almost the same price for the same distance. In the best case (at home) is 10x cheaper.
- Blackout
Eh? What if there’s a gas supply issue? Can’t fuel up. I’ve experienced this after a natural disaster disrupted gas deliveries. Lines for blocks. Days to wait.
Not to mention what if someone does something silly like start a war and push the price of oil up. Solar does not increase in price after it’s made.
Doesn’t mean they can’t raise it :>
My argument: When I can get a decent used EV for $5k, I’ll do it. Until then, I’ll just get a decent used ICE car for $5K.
I always thought this was one of the reasons for an EV incentive. Encourage more people like me to buy the expensive ones sooner to develop the market, guaranteed demand for manufacturers, but that also gets us faster to the point of cheap used EVs
I feel like some of those points are slightly more valid in rural areas (especially in the US, where a power pole being knocked over means that the power is out for hours) where the people making those points are more likely to have grown up. Then again if you are not in a rural point of the united states you are less likely to need a car.
If I lived in rural US where the power is not guaranteed I would install PV and use my car as a power backup.
That sounds rather expensive (if PV is photovoltaic). And I was not aware that cars were built to supply power like that.
Yeah, I meant photovoltaic with PV. At least in Europe it’s gotten really cheap.
There are mutiple ways to use the energy that is stored in electric cards. There’s “Vehicle to Load” (V2L) for plugging appliances directly into the car, “Vehicle to Home” (V2H) for connecting your home to the car and “Vehicle to grid” for connecting the car to the power grid and selling the stored energy.
“Vehicle to load” is also useful when going camping or when you need power when there’s no outlet near you. You just need a car that supports it and a small adapter.
In America it’s gotten cheap too. You can buy panels at harbor freight these days
My reason: the hybrid I have is still working fine and a new car and a new car won’t be in my budget for the next 10 years or so. Also iirc about 33% of the energy a typical car will ever use is spend on its production, so it’s better for the environment to use a car until it breaks down.
that’s completely fine. If your car works, you shouldn’t throw it away, that is wasteful.
Depends on the car. Waste of resources sure, but it can reduce emissions depending on the car
Unless their car is scrapped, this only results in another car being on the road.
New drivers will be new drivers regardless. It will most likely just end up as a stored car or a replaced car of another car
a replaced car of another car
Unless the ‘another’ car being replaced isn’t irreparably broken and just doesn’t suffice our MOT requirements, it’s probably ending in a 3rd world country and will remain in use there (probably instead a cheap light EV).
- What if there’s a blackout in the whole city and you can’t charge your car?
They couldn’t refuel their ice car either or how do they think the fuel is made to flow “uphill” from the tank in the ground into their car.
I like cars, I like the idea of EVs, I fucking hate modern cars (post 08 give or take) so imagine my opinions on most EVs. Just give me an electric Mule or a converted old beater I’ll be happy, if it’s basically anything else I better have the capacity to turn it into an EV equivalent of a dune buggy because I do not respect modern car design in the slightest, don’t care if it’s Chinese, Japanese, European, or American they all have shitty interiors an over reliance on electronics and generally have too many “comfort” features designed to compensate for incompetent design or drivers.
electric Mule or a converted old beater I’ll be happy,
That would be a 2016-2019 Nissan Leaf. No bells. No whistles. No problems.
My arguments against EV, not sorted by anything:
- It’s comfy to feel and hear working engine.
- I really dislike automatic gearbox. It feels as if I lost part of control over vehicle and I kinda need it to not go autopilot. Like, me going autopilot, not car.
- EV’s seem best for richer people than me living in houses where they can charge them up - charging from station still can be pricer than gasoline.
- I can have emergency gas can in the car and if something happen, it will buy me enough range to reach another station. And when I turn off ICE car, it won’t leak it’s fuel, no matter the temps. The last part I will write up at the end.
- Where I live, the EV infrastructure is catching fast but it is still really lackluster, and to add to that, even I can feel like 70% safe with infastructure here, it’s not certain for my neighbouring countries so that also limit.
And about 4:
This winter we had a small funny problem that two TIRs decided to play overtake on a frozen road and crashed, blockimg whole road. People spent 12 hours standing in line and not really able to get out from what I heard. ICE cars once turned off in that scenario would not give a frick about temps, but wouldn’t EVs have problems with their battery discharginf either due to cold or due to fighting the cold?
But all in all, I still would like EV car lol. In my use case - that is either driving in my hometown or driving to the next bigger city over, they make a lot of sense. Although I can’t afford any car anyway xD
The concern about cold and EVs is overblown. While sure in the arctic ….
- heat pump makes a huge difference in winter range
- my car really only loses noticeable charge while idle because I keep sentry mode on. I live in a busy area so the entire car keeps waking up to make sure no one is vandalizing it. If I turn that off, the loss is not really noticeable
- I believe Tesla replaced the old tech 12v lead acid battery for running accessories with a lithium ion battery meant to last the life of the car
I believe the other factor in the most publicized instance of cold weather affecting EVs was people. People waiting until they’re desperate, then finding lines, and waiting in their vehicle with heat on
I think cost is one of the biggest ones especially where I am. You need to have a house with a driveway so you can charge at home as the infrastructure is lackluster. Plus the fact that manufacturing just the steel parts of a car creates a hell of a lot of CO2. I’m happy with my 08 deisel with hundreds of thousands of miles on and I’ll keep maintaining it. Who knows, when it finally dies maybe it will be economical to buy an EV? I’ll still get to use deisel though. I drive HGVs and I can’t see them changing to electric anytime soon. As soon as I leave for the day someone else drives the truck I was in. They do not sit around long enough to be charged.
I will get an EV when the range/charge speed will allow me to make it 7 miles in 24 hours. And maybe if they’re small enough to fit in a passenger train.
I will buy one when it is cheap enough that I van afford. Until then, no car.
I think you want a donkey.
Also I want it to be rechargeable with hay bales! …wait
You know electric motor assisted bicycles exist, right?
So do donkeys
Yes, but recharging those is messier and requires extra steps.
Plus I’m pretty sure that they’d be greeted with little enthusiasm on most passenger trains 😄
Oh come on, most people like a little ass.
Sure, but donkeys big enough to ride aren’t exactly little 😁
Huge depreciation and not enough range. Probably wait till next battery revolution and it becomes cheaper than ICE
Depreciation is pointless if you plan to keep your car until it breaks. The range is mostly an excuse that people use to justify they don’t want an EV. Most cars today have at least 400km range and fast charge that’s quick enough to give you a good range from a 15 min stop. Nobody should be driving 1000km non-stop as they claim they’ll be (and which is the main reason they use to talk about the range).
Big depreciation is definitely a risk. Having an option to sell gives more flexibility.
What car do u drive?
Those cars are really expensive compared to entry level ones, which clearly don’t have fast charging nor big capacity
I will get an electric vehicle when the range/charge speed will allow me to make it 1200 miles in 24 hours, and the battery will last longer than 7 years without significant degradation.
Just a quick bit of napkin maths on the ioniq5 - it’s quite famously one of the faster ones to charge / decent range.
Assuming by the numbers on google are correct
Range of the car is 354 miles (let’s say 350) Car can charge from 10% to 80% in 18 min (let’s say 30 min)
That means it’ll go from 35 miles of range to 280 - giving it range of 245 miles.
If you drive 70 MPH for 3.5hr and take a 30 min break you cover 245 miles every 4 hours.
Which means you can realistically achieve what you are looking for in just under 20 hours.
This assumes every 4 hours you encounter somewhere with a fast charger capable of what you need.
This is all highly theoretical and completely dependant on where you’re driving, but the range is possible.
On a more realistic note, 1200 miles!?! Good lord my legs would be so cramped I wouldn’t be able to walk for days! Good luck with the next trip
Have ioniq 5. Yeah, numbers check out. But we also do a 15 min break at 2 hours because of the leg thing. The car can go further but I can’t.
I’ve been doing that in my EV for the last 5 years. You won’t get an EV because you are looking for excuses not to, not because they don’t fit your use case.
1200 miles in 24 hours
Just curious how often do you go more than 300 miles in a day, and if you do with any frequency how much would it really hinder you to stop for 45 minutes every 300 miles?
I don’t live in a city. My commute is around 100 miles. I drive 500 miles one way about 16 times a year. I drive 2400 miles twice a year.
It’s still more an infrastructure problem than a car problem. I wouldn’t have any hesitation doing that in my EV, but the real difference is I live on the east coast where there are plenty of chargers. Actually I suppose the important question is what direction we’re driving 2,400 miles, because I understand the Midwest is a desert
You do that drive without stopping to pee or eat? Because my EV is pretty short range and slow charging for a modern EV and it still goes further than I can and it’s ready to go again before I am.
Okay so you’re an outlier for electric cars and should stick with a gas car for the foreseeable future.
Yeah. Hence the reply. You didn’t believe me?
No, your original post just came off as “electric cars are completely useless. They don’t fulfill my very specific needs”. Maybe that wasn’t your intention, iunno, but why even say it in the first place?
My post was “I will get an electric vehicle when…” I didnt say they were useless. You read into that with your biases. My biases read this OP as ‘Dumb asses don’t realize they can charge the car” when the reality is way more complicated. Charging takes time which extends the travel. The batteries don’t last, because batteries. And they’re not cheap when they degrade to 10% of their range over a handful of years.
They degrade by about 10% on a 5 year time scale on average. So when your EV is 10 years old its at a state of health is about 80% of original charge. I mean you might get a lemon that degrades faster than that but then typically you’re also putting in a warranty claim for a new battery. I’m not sure how long getting to 10% of original charge would even take because who would even keep a car that long?
I can’t speak for the latter part, but the former is doable. Assuming you actually want to spend a full 24 hours driving. I say this as someone who did nearly exactly one third the distance in one third the time. Depends on your car of course and if you can fast charge. The real world range on mine ended up being a bit less than 200 miles (260 EPA range) going just over 80MPH in Texas, and it had fast charging capabilities.
That said, I wouldn’t recommend it in the vehicle I used. Really need more like 300+ range to make it decent. Cause I had to fully charge at times to make it to the next fast charger and a full charge is at least twice as long as a quick charge, which is typically going from 20% to 80%. Longer range means mostly only having to charge to 80%. That saves a bunch of time.
Typical degradation at 7 years wouldn’t be bad, but with the type of driving you do I expect the degradation will be worse.
